Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has called for the European Union budget to be allocated fairly.
Following a meeting with European Council President Charles Michel in Brussels, the prime minister said the EU budget should be put on a "fair footing", whereas the current concept includes amendments that shift monies from poorer countries to richer ones.
PM Orbán told MTI that he foresaw a busy schedule over the next six months, with several unresolved issues to be discussed, including the post-2020 seven-year EU budget, migration, digitalization and EU enlargement. He said the aim is not to simply debate those issues but to conclude them.
The prime minister said the budget was top of the agenda during his talks with Michel, who is convening an EU summit on the topic on February 20.
PM Orbán said Hungary has not presented its national budget figures in connection with the 2021-2027 EU budget as related negotiations are not yet at that stage. The prime minister said the draft budget presented so far failed to change “bad practices” of the previous seven years, including “unfair elements” such as the allocation of only 5 percent of Brussels funds for poorer countries despite the fact that their population makes up 20 percent of the EU’s population.
The prime minister said he had presented his concrete proposals on righting the conceptual problems in the EU’s budget at the "Friends of Cohesion" meeting of government heads in Portugal and forwarded them to the head of the European Council.
PM Orbán added that further talks are to be expected with the countries that share Hungary’s concerns regarding the budget’s conceptual framework. “We want a fair budget,” he said. “Once we have that, Hungarians will find what they want; a combination of figures that work in their favor.”